Metin 2

Metin 2 Overview

Metin 2 is a simple but fast paced fantasy MMORPG which is popular in Europe and has recently been brought to the North American market by Z8Games. There are three warring factions, each represented by a separate kingdom. All three kingdoms share the same 4 class choices and players of all three start in the same area. Your faction choice only comes into play after level 15 where players of opposing factions may freely attack you. Upon reaching level 5, each class has two specialization options. The classes of Metin 2 are:

Warrior - Warriors focus on physical melee attacks. At level 5, Warriors can become Arahans who possess high attack speeds or Partisans who focus on defense.

Assassin - Assassins prefer light weapons and can specialize into Archers or continue their training as Assassins, focusing instead of daggers or swords.

Mage - Mages are the spell casters of Metin 2 and can chose either the Dragon or Lighting school of magic. Dragon Mages focus on offensive spells while Lighting Mages focus on supportive spells such as heals and buffs.

Sura - The Sura is a hybrid swordsman / casters who may specialize in either Black Magic or Mirage Force. Black Magic Suras possess powerful long ranged spells while Mirage Force Suras are adapt at mixing short ranged magic with their melee attacks.

It is vital that you make your class choice at level 5 by speaking to the appropriate NPC. If you level up before changing classes, you’ll lose the skill points that normally would of been gained from that level.

Metin 2 Screenshots

Metin 2 Feature Video

Full Review

Metin Review

By Erhan Altay

Originally released in 2004 by a Korean developer, Metin has had great success in Europe. More recently, Subagames has published the game for the North American region and given us all a chance to experience it firsthand. Even four years ago, Metin 2 was not a graphically impressive game. By today’s standards, the graphics are rather poor; the 3D characters look decent but the terrain is mostly dull and repetitive. In August 2009 Metin 2 was passed to the Canadian MMORPG publisher Z8Games.

Chose Your Fighter

Character creation seems to be one of the areas sacrificed to make Metin 2 a simple, stream lined MMORPG. There are 3 kingdoms at war, each with identical classes; Warrior, Mage, Assassin, and Sura. The only customization choice players are given is gender and two outfits per class. There are no immediate hair style or color choices though these can be purchased through the item mall. What’s even stranger is that despite the kingdom you select, the starting location is the same for all players. While picking a faction, players are clearly made to select different geographic locations on a map so how they end up starting in the same area is never explained. New characters do not start with any skills or skill points but do start with a different allocation of the game’s 4 stats; Con, Int, Str, and Dex. Each Each level players are given additional stat points to distribute and will start receiving skill points after they make their first class change at level 5.

Welcome to Metin

Metin 2 starts players out on the outskirts of a town surrounded by green hills. Quests, as they become available, will appear on the left of the screen in the form of small scroll icons. The first of these will ask players to go talk to an NPC located nearby. The radar and map in Metin are very crude but do a modest job leading players to quest objectives. NPCs with whom you have business will flash red on the radar which helps to easily locate them. The map which can be opened by hitting ‘m’ will give you a simple layout of the zone you’re in. I’ve yet to discover a method to open a world map screen which I found frustrating. From that first initial quest, players are given many more but I’ve found that most are not worth the effort. The only quests worth doing are the ones marked ‘level x quest’ where x is your current level. These quests involve killing 2-4 of a certain monster and carry a huge reward — +90-99% experience. Simply by doing these you can get to level 21 in no time. My only advice is to not carried away and keep grinding when you hit level 5. Take the time to go back to town chose your specialized class. Luckily, there is no complicated procedure involved in this, just go to town and talk to the appropriate NPC and you’re done! To get more information on what each class does, please read the overview tab.

Dogs and Wolves

The combat in Metin 2 is a bit different than most MMORPGs. Rather than simply select a target, hit the attack button and watch, players make each swing of the sword with a separate click. Additionally, monsters usually come in waves of 3 or more and your attacks are capable of hitting multiple targets. This leads to much more fast paced and entertaining fights. For example, having a pack of 6 wolves coming at you and hitting them all back with a single sword strike is both entertaining and gives the game an ‘arcade’ feel. Unfortunately, Metin 2 has taken the old MMORPG habit of recycling monster models to a new extreme. Throughout your first 15 people you’re likely to fight nothing but different types of dogs and wolves. You have your hungry wolves, your alpha wolves and your gray, blue, and regular wolves. Not content with that, there are also combination of these adjectives. For example you may find yourself trying to track down ‘hungry alpha blue wolves’ for a quest but can’t seem to find anything but hungry blue wolves or alpha gray wolves. In general, the further you get from town the higher the stronger the monsters but the spawns are random to a certain extent. If you kill a group of blue wolves, they may respawn as hungry blue wolves the next time. The first area of Metin 2 is filled with recycled wolves, boars, bears, and tigers. Things don’t get much better later either — two maps later you’ll encounter ‘cursed wolves’ with all the adjectives thrown in from of them.

Watch Your Back

What the game lacks in PvE content, it makes up with in PvP. Upon reaching level 15, players will be able to participate in Metin 2′s factional PvP system. Players will be free to attack or be attacked by members of the opposing kingdoms, death will carry an experience penalty so its important to avoid hopeless battles. Metin also has a dueling system in place where both players must consent. This method carries no experience lose. The final PvP method, called ‘open’ is a special mode players may enter which allows them to attack or be attacked by any player, including members of their own faction. Player killing in this fashion carries stiff penalties, frequent PKers will start to randomly drop items from their inventory upon death. Players are free to form guilds and can even purchase special guild forts in Metin but the higher in level you get, the more necessary the cash shop items will seem.

Final Verdict: Fair

Metin 2 is a dated game with simple controls and gameplay but offers an exciting combat system. The fast experience rate keeps things exciting during the early levels but the repetitive monster designs, boring maps and low population keep Metin 2 from earning my recommendation.